Contact: josh@joshhhunt.com

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The Great Books

I am pleased to introduce the release of a new curriculum outline. For years I have written four lessons a week, based on the suggested texts of someone else’s outlines. With this new outline, I will invite groups to join me in reading The Great Books and discussing the Bible verses in those books.

What are The Great Books? Here is a partial list. (I’d be open to your suggestions. Email me at josh@joshhunt.com )

• Knowing God, J.I. Packer (available now)
• Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritual Life, Donald Whitney (projected release: Fall, 2015)
• Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul (projected release, late 2015)
• Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges (projected release, early 2016)
• Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
• Desiring God, John Piper
• Trusting God, Jerry Bridges
• Being a Contagious Christian, Bill Hybels
• Basic Christianity, John Stott
• Ultimate Priority, John Macarthur
• Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, Peter Wagner
• Prayer, Richard Foster
• Experiencing God,  Henry Blackaby

I plan to write these first four and then evaluate from there. If I get positive feedback, the plan would be to write about 6 a year. This way, you will always have choices. I will be writing more than you have time to complete. These studies will be suitable for Sunday morning as well as mid-week groups.

Participants will be encouraged to buy and read the corresponding book. I will be writing a study guide in the form of Good Questions Have Groups Talking. These will be available on Amazon, in both print and Kindle versions. In addition, they will be available by subscription as part of www.mybiblestudylessons.com . On this site, churches can have access to hundreds of lessons for about $10 per teacher per year. Churches would be encouraged to subsidize the cost of the books. I do not encourage churches buy the books outright, as they typically do with Sunday School curriculum. If people will not pay for the book, they are likely not going to read it. I would not pass them out for free.

Nothing has influenced my life—except for reading the Bible itself in Christian Quiet Time—like the reading of The Great Books. My dream is that this plan will encourage thousands of Christians to benefit from these books in the same way that I have.

Nearly every church I am in is struggling with the question: how do we make true disciples. Encouraging people to read The Great Books is part of the answer.

Discipleship in the Rearview Mirror

“What is your plan for making disciples in your church?”

Ask almost any pastor this and he will look awkwardly at his shoes. He doesn’t really have much of a plan. OK, he doesn’t have a plan at all.

Or, he might have a plan, but it is a new plan. It is a plan that is just now on the drawing board. It is a plan he just read about and is dying to tell you about and eager to implement. But it is not a proven plan that predictably produces disciples.

Ask him about the disciple making plan in the church he grew up in. He will laugh. It is his way of admitting what we all know: most churches don’t have much of a plan to produce disciples.

“How did you become a disciple?”

Now, there is a question he can answer. He can tell you how he became a disciple and feels pretty good about the fact that he is a disciple. It is an odd thing that most of us admit we don’t have a good plan for making disciples, but most of us think we became disciples in spite of that.

There is a lesson here. If you want to learn to make disciples, look in the rearview mirror. Ask: how did I become a disciple? How can I use that knowledge to help others?

Press this pastor a little further, and he will talk about five things. (This from the informal research of Andy Stanley.) After numerous conversations with many groups, Andy Stanley has learned that disciples are made because of five catalysts:

• Practical Teaching
• Private Disciplines
• Personal Ministry
• Providential Relationships
• Pivotal Circumstances

Look in the rear-view mirror of your life. I bet you will see that these five things caused you to grow as a disciple.

I’d like to suggest one more, and I am betting the farm that for this next year that it will help the people in my church grow deeper—much deeper—in their discipleship. It is one of the key influences in my life, and I bet it was in yours as well. In a way, it is a sub-point under #1 above: practical teaching. But, when I think of practical teaching, I think of listening to a teacher that “teaches to obey” (Matthew 28.19, 20) not just “teaches to know” the word. I like to say it this way: we are not out to make smarter sinners. I digress.

The sixth catalyst—the one not on Andy Stanley’s list—is the second most important for me. It is right behind Private Disciplines. It has been more important than the sermons I have read, the ministry I have done or anything else on the list. I am betting that for many of you reading this, it is true for you as well.

What is this magic catalyst?

Reading the great books. Books like…

• J.I. Packer’s Knowing God
• Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life
• R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God
• Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

My goal this next year is to encourage my people to read these great books. I have just started a sermon series on Knowing God, and plan to follow it up with the others on the list.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I will be preaching the Bible, not preaching J.I. Packer. I will be reading through Packer’s book, finding the key texts from scripture and preaching those.

In addition, we are in our second shipment of books and CDs for people to purchase and read or listen to. I am encouraging all my people to read or listen to Knowing God as I preach through the texts in this great book.

I have also will be writing Bible Study Guides that groups can use for discussion. These will be part of my series of Bible Study Guides, Good Questions Have Groups Talking. They will be available on Amazon, as well as by subscription on my website. http://www.mybiblestudylessons.com/The-Great-Books

As you think about how to make disciples of the people God has called you to serve, I’d invite you in joining me in an experiment. Let’s go through the great books together and see what God does in our hearts. The great books are by far and away the greatest source of spiritual nourishment for me, outside of the Quiet Time itself. I plan to spend the next year at my church encouraging people to read the great books. I’d invite you to consider doing the same.